Reg nodded emphatically. "Four drums of it," he said. "One solid round
in the gun. Another drum of solid and two explosive."
"There's a thousand rounds in each drum," snapped Scorio, "but they last
only a minute, so do your firing in bursts."
"I ain't handled buzzers all these years without knowing something about
them."
"There's only two men there," said Scorio, "and they'll probably be
asleep. Come down with your motor dead. The lab roof is thick and the
plane landing on those thick tires won't wake them. But be on your guard
all the time. Pete and Max will go through the lockdoor into the
laboratory and open the safe. Dump all the papers and money and whatever
else you find into the bags and then get out fast. Hop into the plane
and take off. When you're clear of the building, turn the heaters on it.
I want it melted down and the men and stuff inside with it. Don't leave
even a button unmelted. Get it?"
* * * * *
"Sure, chief," said Pete. He dusted his hands together.
"Now get going. Beat it."
The four men turned and filed out of the room, through the door leading
to the tumbledown warehouse where was hidden the streamlined metal ship.
Swiftly they entered it and the ship nosed gently upward, blasting out
through a broken, frameless skylight, climbing up and up, over the
gleaming spires of New York.
Back in the room hung with steel-cloth curtains, alone, Scorio lit a
cigarette and chuckled. "They won't have a chance," he said.
"Who won't?" asked a tiny voice from almost in front of him.
"Why, Manning and Page ..." said Scorio, and then stopped. The fire of
the match burned down and scorched his fingers. He dropped it. "Who
asked that?" he roared.
"I did," said the piping voice.
Scorio looked down. A three-inch man sat on a matchbox on the desk!
"Who are you?" the gangster shouted.
"I'm Manning," said the little man. "The one you're going to kill. Don't
you remember?"
"Damn you!" shrieked Scorio. His hand flipped open a drawer and pulled
out a flame pistol. The muzzle of the pistol came up and blasted.
Screwed down to its smallest diameter, the gun's aim was deadly. A
straight lance of flame, no bigger than a pencil, streamed out, engulfed
the little man, bored into the table top. The box of matches exploded
with a gush of red that was a dull flash against the blue blaze of the
gun.
But the figure of the man stood _within the flame_! Stood there and
waved an arm at Scorio. The piping voice came out of the heart of the
gun's breath.
"Maybe I'd better get a bit smaller. Make me harder to hit. More sport
that way."
* * * * *
Scorio's finger lifted from the trigger. The flame snapped off.
Laboriously climbing out of the still smoking furrow left in the oaken
table top was Greg Manning, not more than an inch tall now.
The gangster laid the gun on the table, stepped closer, warily. With the
palm of a mighty hand he swatted viciously at the little figure.
"I got you now!"
But the figure seemed to ooze upright between his fingers, calmly
stepped off his hand onto the table. And now it began to grow. Watching
it, Scorio saw it grow to six inches and there it stopped.
"What are you?" he breathed.
"I told you," said the little image. "I'm Gregory Manning. The man you
set out to kill. I've watched every move you've made and known
everything you planned."
"But that isn't possible," protested Scorio. "You're out on the West
Coast. This is some trick. I'm just seeing things."
"You aren't seeing anything imaginary. I'm really here, in this room
with you. I could lift my finger and kill you if I wished ... and maybe
I should."
Scorio stepped back a pace.
"But I'm not going to," said Manning. "I have something better saved for
you. Something more appropriate."
"You can't touch me!"
"Look," said Manning sternly. He pointed his finger at a chair. It
suddenly grew cloudy, became a wisp of trailing smoke, was gone.
The gangster backed away, eyes glued to the spot where the chair had
vanished.
"Look here," piped the little voice. Scorio jerked his head around and
looked.
The chair was in Manning's hand. A tiny chair, but the very one that had
disappeared from the room a moment before.
"Watch out!" warned Manning, and heaved the chair. The tiny chair
seemed to float in the air. Then with a rush it gathered speed, grew
larger. In a split second it was a full-sized chair and it was hurtling
straight at the gangster's head.
With a strangled cry Scorio threw up his arms. The chair crashed into
him, bowled him over.
"Now do you believe me?" demanded Manning.
Scrambling to his feet, Scorio gibbered madly, for the six-inch figure
was growing. He became as large as the average man, and then much
larger. His head cleared the high ceiling by scant inches. His mighty
hands reached out for the gangster.
Scorio scuttled away on hands and knees, yelping with terror.
Powerful hands seemed to seize and lift him. The room was blotted out.
The Earth was gone. He was in a place where there was nothing. No light,
no heat, no gravitation. For one searing, blasting second he seemed to
be floating in strangely suspended animation. Then with a jolt he became
aware of new surroundings.
He blinked his eyes and looked around. He was in a great laboratory that
hummed faintly with the suggestion of terrific power, that smelled of
ozone and seemed filled with gigantic apparatus.
Two men stood in front of him.
He staggered back.
"Manning!" he gasped.
Manning grinned savagely at him. "Sit down, Scorio. You won't have long
to wait. Your boys will be along any minute now."
* * * * *
Chizzy crouched over the controls, his eyes on the navigation chart.
Only the thin screech of parted air disturbed the silence of the ship.
The high scream and the slow, precise snack-snack of cards as Reg and
Max played a game of double solitaire with a cold, emotionless
precision.
The plane was near the stratosphere, well off the traveled air lanes. It
was running without lights, but the cabin bulbs were on, carefully
shielded.
Pete sat in the co-pilot's chair beside Chizzy. His blank,
expressionless eyes stared straight ahead.
"I don't like this job," he complained.
"Why not?" asked Chizzy.
"Page and Manning aren't the kind of guys a fellow had ought to be
fooling around with. They ain't just chumps. You fool with characters
like them and you got trouble."
Chizzy growled at him disgustedly, bent to his controls.
Straight ahead was a thin sliver of a dying Moon that gave barely
enough illumination to make out the great, rugged blocks of the
mountains, like dark, shadowy brush-strokes on a newly started canvas.
Pete shuddered. There was something about the thin, watery moonlight,
and those brush-stroke hills....
"It seems funny up here," he said.
"Hell," growled Chizzy, "you're going soft in your old age."
Silence fell between the two. The snack-snack of the cards continued.
"You ain't got nothing to be afraid of," Chizzy told Pete. "This tub is
the safest place in the world. She's overpowered a dozen times. She can
outfly anything in the air. She's rayproof and bulletproof and
bombproof. Nothing can hurt us."
But Pete wasn't listening. "That moonlight makes a man see things. Funny
things. Like pictures in the night."
"You're balmy," declared Chizzy.
Pete started out of his seat. His voice gurgled in his throat. He
pointed with a shaking finger out into the night.
"Look!" he yelled "Look!"
Chizzy rose out of his seat ... and froze in sudden terror.
Straight ahead of the ship, etched in silvery moon-lines against the
background of the star-sprinkled sky, was a grim and terrible face.
It was as big and hard as a mountain.
_CHAPTER THIRTEEN_
The ship was silent now. Even the whisper of the cards had stopped. Reg
and Max were on their feet, startled by the cries of Pete and Chizzy.
"It's Manning!" shrieked Pete. "He's watching us!"
Chizzy's hand whipped out like a striking snake toward the controls and,
as he grasped them, his face went deathly white. For the controls were
locked! They resisted all the strength he threw against them and the
ship still bore on toward that mocking face that hung above the Earth.
"Do something!" screamed Max. "You damn fool, do something!"
"I can't," moaned Chizzy. "The ship is out of control."
It seemed impossible. That ship was fast and tricky and it had reserve
power far beyond any possible need. It handled like a dream ... it was
tops in aircraft. But there was no doubt that some force more powerful
than the engines and controls of the ship itself had taken over.
"Manning's got us!" squealed Pete. "We came out to get him and now he
has us instead!"
The craft was gaining speed. The whining shriek of the air against its
plates grew thinner and higher. Listening, one could almost feel and
hear the sucking of the mighty power that pulled it at an ever greater
pace through the tenuous atmosphere.
The face was gone from the sky now. Only the Moon remained, the Moon and
the brush-stroke mountains far below.
Then, suddenly, the speed was slowing and the ship glided downward, down
into the saw-teeth of the mountains.
"We're falling!" yelled Max, and Chizzy growled at him.
But they weren't falling. The ship leveled off and floated, suspended
above a sprawling laboratory upon a mountain top.
"That's Manning's laboratory," whispered Pete in terror-stricken tones.
The levers yielded unexpectedly. Chizzy flung the power control over,
drove the power of the accumulator bank, all the reserve, into the
engines. The ship lurched, but did not move. The engines whined and
screamed in torture. The cabin's interior was filled with a blast of
heat, the choking odor of smoke and hot rubber. The heavy girders of the
frame creaked under the mighty forward thrust of the engines ... but the
ship stood still, frozen above that laboratory in the hills.
Chizzy, hauling back the lever, turned around, pale. His hand began
clawing for his heat gun. Then he staggered back. For there were only
two men in the cabin with him--Reg and Max. Pete had gone!
"He just disappeared," Max jabbered. "He was standing there in front of
us. Then all at once he seemed to fade, as if he was turning into smoke.
Then he was gone."
* * * * *
Something had descended about Pete. There was no sound, no light, no
heat. He had no sense of weight. It was as if, suddenly, his mind had
become disembodied.
Seeing and hearing and awareness came back to him as one might turn on a
light. From the blackness and the eventless existence of a split second
before, he was catapulted into a world of light and sound.
It was a world that hummed with power, that was ablaze with light, a
laboratory that seemed crammed with mighty banks of massive machinery,
lighted by great globes of creamy brightness, shedding an illumination
white as sunlight, yet shadowless as the light of a cloudy day.
Two men stood in front of him, looking at him, one with a faint smile on
his lips, the other with lines of fear etched across his face. The
smiling one was Gregory Manning and the one who was afraid was Scorio!
With a start, Pete snatched his pistol from its holster. The sights came
up and lined on Manning as he pressed the trigger. But the lancing heat
that sprang from the muzzle of the gun never reached Manning. It seemed
to strike an obstruction less than a foot away. It mushroomed with a
flare of scorching radiance that drove needles of agony into the
gangster's body.
His finger released its pressure and the gun dangled limply from his
hand. He moaned with the pain of burns upon his unprotected face and
hands. He beat feebly at tiny, licking blazes that ran along his
clothing.
Manning was still smiling at him.
"You can't reach me, Pete," he said. "You can only hurt yourself. You're
enclosed within a solid wall of force that matter cannot penetrate."